What Companies Get Wrong About Data Ownership and What to Do Instead

Most companies believe they own their customer data. Most are wrong.

Data is your most powerful asset for fueling decisions, improving customer experiences, and providing a competitive edge.

But if your customer, marketing, or product teams rely on third-party analytics tools, there’s a great chance you don’t actually own your data.

It’s processed, stored, and sometimes even monetized by vendors who decide your access and control levels.

This results in exposure to compliance risks, vendor lock-in, and the possibility of losing historical insights when your platform changes or disappears.  

What’s worse, you could lose access to critical insights from your data, leading to fewer sales and satisfied customers because you might not be able to fully use all the insights possible from your data.

If you currently rely on third-party analytics, public or hybrid cloud services, or CRMs and lack total control over what you give them, it is time you ask yourself two questions:

1. Who owns your data?
2. How do you take it back?  

Our complete guide on achieving truly autonomous data will help you answer these questions.

Why you might not own your data

Many businesses may assume that collecting customer insights gives them the right to those insights. Truthfully, giving your data to third-party services for analytics, marketing, or CRM purposes means giving up control of your data.

Here’s why many organizations unknowingly give up control over their data and how to avoid the same mistake.

1. Third-Party platforms process data independently

Take Google Analytics as an example. This commonly used web service collects data from your site visitors and then stores it on their servers, which are maintained by their policies.

You cannot instruct Google where to put your data, how long to keep it, or who can access it. Even if your users consent to data collection via a cookie banner, you still don’t control how third-party platforms store, process, or use that data.

While third-party tools may ask for consent to collect data, that doesn’t mean you retain control over how it’s stored, processed, or shared on their end. Their terms often allow them to aggregate, anonymize, or use your data for service improvements or marketing intelligence.

A 2023 Cisco study revealed that 92% of companies know that leads will not purchase their products if their data is not adequately secured. Yet, most companies continually rely on third-party platforms with obscure data policies.

2. Regulatory blind spots and compliance risks

COPPA, HIPAA, and other private data regulations require stricter rules for collecting, storing, and sharing customer data. But how can you ensure that third parties are following the specific rules of each data regulation?

Unless you’ve carefully reviewed their terms and conditions and cross-checked them against regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, or COPPA, there’s a real risk that your company could be held responsible for any non-compliance.

That means if your analytics vendor stores data in an unapproved region, mishandles user content, or suffers a breach, you could still be liable, even if the mistake wasn’t yours.

You could be liable for their data breaches, mishandling of user content, and data storage in a non-compliant jurisdiction. For example, Target’s infamous 2013 breach was traced back to a third-party HVAC vendor with weak security protocols, yet Target bore the legal and reputational fallout.

Google Analytics, for instance, cannot be used in several European countries like Austria, France, and Italy due to its non-compliance with GDPR.

“Third parties can introduce compliance risks. If your analytics provider gets hit by a regulatory ruling (like we saw with Google Analytics in Europe), suddenly, your use of it becomes a legal issue. Also, a breach by a third-party vendor can expose your users’ data even if your systems are secure.” - Onur Alp Soner, CEO at Countly

3. Data trapped by vendor lock-in

Even if you want to switch platforms or migrate your data, your current SaaS platform may prevent you from doing so due to the high costs and difficulties of moving trapped data, meaning data that is difficult or impossible to export in a usable, portable format.

When you choose to ditch third-party analytics platforms, you could be halted by:

1. Historical data that you cannot export in a usable format.
2. The risk of breaking your tech stack integrations and incurring expensive development costs.
3. Having to keep paying your platform to avoid losing access.

‍

Ask yourself: If my analytics provider went out of business, could I migrate all my data easily?

If you answered no, you do not fully own your data.

“When you rely on third-party tools, you’re essentially renting insight. The data might live on someone else’s servers, and you access it via their interfaces. You might not be able to take it all with you if you switch providers. If that third-party changes their policies, prices, or even goes out of business, you could lose critical historical data or functionality.” - Onur Alp Soner, CEO at Countly

4. Inadvertently sharing data with competitors

Several third-party analytics tools aggregate customer data from numerous businesses:

• Meta Pixel enables retargeting by tracking user actions and linking them to Facebook profiles.
• Google and Facebook use behavioral data to personalize and optimize ads.
• Mixpanel may process cross-tenant data unless opted out in settings.

They use this resource to train their AI models, make their ad campaigns more targeted, and sell insights and opportunities to advertisers.

As you might have guessed, your customer data could also be funneled to your competitors and used to drive their success without your consent.

You might remember Facebook’s Advanced Analytics platform. Once it was discontinued, many companies discovered how tied they were to third-party insights. By then, it was too late, as their marketing data and the platform had vanished.

Data ownership evidence in business cases

Taking control of your data goes beyond compliance. Actual ownership is about autonomy, security, and indefinite success.

Businesses that take control of their data will enjoy many benefits, which we will explore in this section.

1. Fully owning your data can boost your data security and privacy

Self-hosting your analytics or employing a private cloud gives you complete control of your access controls, compliance measures, and encryption protocols.

With this autonomy, you can customize your security strategies according to your business’s needs without being dependent on third-party vendors.

According to a 2023 IBM report, the average data breach cost hit a record $4.45 million — up 15% over three years.

Due to complex remediation processes and dependencies across multiple systems, these costs are often higher when third-party vendors are involved.

By self-hosting, businesses can reduce third-party exposure, streamline response protocols, and potentially lower breach costs.

2. Regulatory compliance is easier when your data is fully yours

Owning your data allows you to decide how and where it is kept, making it easier to comply with laws like the CCPA, COPPA, GDPR, and HIPAA. By ensuring that data processing procedures are continuously in line with legal standards, this control lowers the possibility of fines for non-compliance.​

3. Complete personalization and analytics adaptability are possible

Third-party analytics tools frequently enforce uniform reporting formats that might not meet your company's particular needs. However, first-party analytics provide you the ability to:​

1. Track only the critical metrics of your company to ensure pertinent and valuable insights.
2. Maintain data as long as necessary to enable trend analysis and longitudinal research free from outside restrictions.
3. Easily integrate with internal systems, CRMs, and BI tools to build a unified data ecosystem suited to your operational procedures.

4. You gain independence from Big Tech

You are not in control when you operate within the closed ecosystems of Big Tech platforms like Google Analytics, Facebook Business Suite, or Salesforce. You are playing by their rules, locked into their pricing models, subject to sudden policy changes, and at the mercy of how they use your data.

Would you let a competitor access your customer insights?

That’s a real risk when third-party analytics providers share aggregated data with advertisers or use it to train models.

For example, Meta's terms allow data collected via the Pixel to be used to improve ad services, potentially benefiting competitors.

Breaking free from this cycle requires more than just switching tools; it means reclaiming control. A first-party data strategy eliminates these points of failure and gives your organization the autonomy to innovate, comply, and scale on your terms.

How to take back control of your data

Now that you appreciate the benefits of data ownership, we would like to demonstrate how, by working together, we can guarantee your autonomy.

Countly is a first-party digital analytics platform that we created to help companies stop relying on third-party platforms. We let you capture, analyze, and act on your user data and take complete control of it.

We were inspired by the need for a change and were empowered to help businesses avoid having their data monetized by third parties. We believe that data privacy and insights are interdependent.

Countly is for businesses wishing to finally own their data without suffering penalties for making changes or losing their analytical power.

When you take back control of your data, you no longer need to depend on Big Tech. You can enjoy full autonomy over your data, enabling its safe and efficient storage, processing, and usage.

Let us explore how we can help you own your data while staying compliant and without fear of it being shared.

1. Full data ownership through self-hosting and private cloud deployment

Unlike standard SaaS analytics platforms that process your data externally, Countly gives you total control over where and how your data is stored.

You can choose how your data is deployed and stored:

1. Deploy on a private cloud with full ownership and control.
2. Self-host on your own infrastructure for maximum data sovereignty.

With Countly, your data remains inside your infrastructure and is entirely under your control; there is no hidden data monetization, vendor lock-in, or exposure to third parties.

How does Countly’s self-hosting option enhance data security and control?

"It basically inherits the company’s security. The more secure the company's infrastructure and practices are, the more secure Countly will be. Imagine if the most secure military had to store their weapons in some third-party warehouses. How secure would that be? Instead, they store them themselves on their premises and dictate whatever protocol they need to make sure they are safe. It is the same thing with self-hosted data." - Arturs Sosins - CTO at Countly

2. Compliance-ready analytics designed for privacy

Countly was created initially with data privacy in mind, guaranteeing adherence to the strictest laws in the world, such as GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA.

• Customizable data retention policies that let you choose how long to store data.
• Data anonymization and redaction to safeguard sensitive user information.
• User consent management to manage data gathering transparently.

Maintain compliance, reduce risk, and adhere to international data regulations within your own infrastructure.

3. We never share your data

One of the main dangers of employing third-party analytics is that your data is frequently shared, combined, or even sold to rivals and advertisers.

Countly has a rigorous zero-data-sharing rule:

• No cross-company data aggregation
• No selling data to advertisers
• No sharing user insights with third parties

You own your data. No concessions.

The future belongs to businesses that own their data

Data is more than simply another resource; it is the cornerstone of how your business establishes credibility, makes choices, and maintains its resilience in a world that is changing quickly. But all too frequently, companies give that foundation to outside platforms that have restrictions, carry hazards, and function under conditions that don't always match your objectives.

That is altered by actual data ownership.

Selecting a first-party data strategy gives you the power to choose your course, confidently satisfy regulatory requirements, adjust more quickly, and safeguard what counts: your clients' trust.

It goes beyond simple compliance. It's about being adaptable, being independent, and creating an entirely yours long-term edge.

According to a 2023 International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) survey, 94% of businesses agreed that insufficient data protection would discourage clients from doing business with them. This emphasizes the importance of having strong data privacy policies to keep customers' trust.

Businesses that implement this change now will be better able to handle unpredictability and get greater value from their data in the future.

This is an essential step forward, not a trend. The time to take it is now.

Countly is here to assist you in making that change in a safe, discreet, and convenient way.

‍